My wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and I were over at Albemarle Field in Newton last night, listening to people sing the “Star Spangled Banner” in an octave only dogs can hear – and watching the fireworks, of course – and SWMBT was discoursing upon Barbra Streisand’s 700-page autobiography, which apparently is 50 pages of tell-all gossip and 650 pages of vocal care instruction. Me, I let my voice do the equivalent of play in traffic, but if you want to sing duets with Mariah Carey at the age of 83, you probably need to up your game a little bit.
I’m thinking of this today because this past Wednesday, one of the musicians at David Scott’s songwriting series was one of our local folks made good, Danielle Miraglia, and one of the things I discovered as she was introduced is that her 2020 album “Bright Shining Stars” debuted at #15 on the Billboard blues charts. Danielle and I aren’t friends, really – we’ve never shared a meal, or hung out at a party, or painted each other’s toenails or anything like that. But I do know her, in the sense that we can have a conversation that involves a little more than saying hello and then looking awkward for five minutes. Boston, after all, is a fantastic city for musicians to know each other, especially if you’ve been here a while; lots of stages plus lots of years equals lots of people you kind of know. I’ve had this vague level of familiarity with a number of folks who have made good: I used to “know” Lori McKenna and Mary Gauthier in that way, although I would be stunned if either of them could pick me out of a lineup at this point; more familiar would be Peter Mulvey, who I was actually acquaintances with for a few years before he left town to become Peter Mulvey, and while he might still be be able to pick me out of a lineup, he’d certainly look at me as if I had three heads, since what he knew of me at the time was that I sat in my living room and bitched about not being a performing musician.
But I digress (which, for me, is a lot like breathing, except you probably want to beat me over the head with a stick). The thing about these folks that’s relevant, in the wake of Barbra Streisand’s vocal training tell-all, is the way they’ve mastered their craft. We all need examples, and there’s very seldom such a thing as an overnight sensation. I seem to remember that Bob Seger (yes, I’m carbon-dating myself) used to joke about how it took him thirty years to become an overnight sensation, and the point of the joke is that those thirty years were spent laboring in relative obscurity, side by side with folks like me, honing his craft. And yes, there’s a good deal of luck involved in making good; but the fact is that the luck gets layered on top of an immense amount of hard work – which local, obscure colleagues like me get to see.
Sure, when I was younger I used to be jealous of these people, the ones who made good. But I was overvaluing the luck and undervaluing the hard work. You know the old joke about how many musicians it takes to screw in a light bulb, right? Two: one to screw in the bulb and the other to watch and say, “Yeah, I coulda done that”. We can’t all make good; there aren’t enough ears, and most of us don’t, or can’t, do enough of the work to put ourselves in line to have the luck. But what we can do is watch the work, and learn from it what we can. And for watching the work, this town, man, there’s no place better.
So thanks to all the folks who have made good who continue to grace our tiny local stages, and for sharing the work. I feel honored to be part of it, in my tiny way. I’m never gonna be on the Billboard charts (although heaven knows that my new album, Bad Apple, would be a worthy entry if Billboard had a Top Snark 100 category), but there’s still plenty to learn.